


Fever Road

by Shiera_Seastar



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-26
Updated: 2018-05-14
Packaged: 2018-07-18 07:47:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,315
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7305925
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shiera_Seastar/pseuds/Shiera_Seastar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sandor Clegane swears himself to the Starks, a crumbling House with just one little She-Wolf left, and he must bring her to safety. But the road is long, dark, and full of terrors.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Green Fork

                                                                                                                   Fever Road

 

                                                                                                                    Chapter 1.

The river was black as wine and cold as ice in the night. Carrying her in his arms, Sandor Clegane waded in boots and all. He lowered her burning and seizing form into the darkness. His left hand at her neck dipped her hair, his right held her at the hip. Every inch of her was submerged save her nose and mouth. His eyes were drawn to the red lips still laboring breath above the water. In her illness she looked a spectral sea creature gone asunder.

Sandor felt queerly. There was a terrible squeezing in his chest that was not anger and not hate. It was fear. Hardly ever had he felt fear without its twin, rage. There was no neck to crack in revenge for this wrong. No rib to skewer for relief. It was a spiraling helplessness he could not fend off. This was a fever he could not purge from her body with his sword. Maybe it had even been his body that had put the fever into hers.

Long hair floated to the surface, it curled and glossed around her face. Only the moon and the stars gave him light enough to see the coloring leeched from it, staining the tide a dark brown. Leaving only deep auburn glinting back up at him. Her slim arms stayed folded around her middle, her eyes squeezed shut in pain while her shoulders convulsed and her jaw ground her teeth to dust.

There was not a cloud in the sky but he saw warm rain fall onto the dark glass of the river and ripple there. One pellet splashed onto her bottom lip. There was a soft moment; then her lips parted and she licked the saltiness away.

 Her eyes opened under the water.

 _She sees me_ , he thought.

How did he appear to her? She could only have seen an ugly, hulking figure blurred from beneath the ford.

The blue eyes closed again.

His teeth began to chatter as quickly as little birds do. His toes and fingers tingled and pricked with needles before going numb. But still he waited. He waited with her until finally her brow began to cool and her seizing subsided. Exhausted, half frozen, he pulled them back onto the bank. He laid her gently onto the loam, unsure if he should recover her. He sat her up and milked a wineskin down her throat. The eyes were open again and watching him, causing him some uneasiness when she tried to meet her blue to his gray, but he didn't allow it and looked away. He knelt beside her and touched his knuckles to her cheek, dwarfing her features. It no longer felt as if she was boiling from the inside.

He pressed at her collarbone with the pads of his fingers until she lowered herself onto his bedroll.

Next he stoked the fire with his back to her, feeding it kindling and huddled near it like a starving man. More fear coupled with appreciation when he felt warmth rush back into the scarred half of his face. He emptied his boots of river water and massaged his stiff leg into feeling. He stood and stripped from his wet coverings until he was bare and laid them out beside the flickering flames. He rustled in the saddlebag and pulled the other pair of bloodied breeches and the yellowed and stained cloak he had discovered from the girl’s own collection of things. _His_ cloak. When it was thrown over his goose-fleshed shoulders he could smell the Blackwater again. Then even more anger and frustration had to be dispelled before he could return to her side.

When he looked back, she was asleep, covered in his blankets and her wet dress slipped off and warming in the dirt beside his tunic and jerkin. He stared at her empty gown there in the clay and felt his mouth go dry. His thoughts were too far stretched to linger on the bare girl in his furs, so he threw himself down into the dirt and fell asleep; passing the night away dreamlessly.

 

 

                                                                                                                                         **********

He awoke to a horse eating at his face. It’s velvet lips and orange teeth clipping gently at his scars. The sun shining through the canopy was evaporating the morning dew and draped the wood in a watery smoke. Steam curled out of the river, now a happy shade of blue and green. He guffawed Stranger away and stood up quickly. He peered into the blankets beside him and found them empty. The sound of slow munching made him turn to find the girl sitting cross-legged in her newly river-crisped dress and gnawing at a sour cheese rind.

He observed as she experimentally swallowed and waited. When she didn’t toss it like just about everything else, she grinned up at him. He grinned back, his deformity of a face most likely twisting in an unsightly way, because the girl blushed red and looked back down at her cheese. The little bird hadn’t been able to keep anything down for three days. Not since the Inn at the Crossroads when the pox-scarred Inn Keep had coughed in his face. Sandor had slammed the little man against a rotting wall in anger until the girl had touched his elbow and very politely told him to leave the poor man be.

Sandor was still standing in his bloodied breeches and the musty cloak, the latter of which he caught her staring at it sheepishly. “Funny, this.” He said pulling at its drawstrings. “I found it amongst your things.” The Lady Sansa swallowed and looked up at him brazenly.

“I kept it, since you gifted it to me.”

“Did I?”

“You did.”

He made an amused sound through his nose and fetched his dried things before stalking away into the wood. After arming himself in his jerkin again, he watched her from afar through slits in the slim trees. She _seemed_ haler now; her skin wasn’t as flushed and her face wasn’t twisted in discomfort. Last evening Sandor had watched in silent horror as her shivers turned to a snarling fever and violent shaking. The back of her neck had been slick with sweat and her dress had been stained with it. Her short breaths had sounded like a rattle.

After some moments of panic he had thought to bring her to the sinister looking river. Now happily bubbling in the morning light, it seemed the Green Fork of the Trident had ushered the fever away. He watched her throw twigs and feathers into the coals or rummage through the bags; sometimes she squinted and tried to peer into the thicket for his return. It always pleased him when he noticed her search. He rubbed at the itching stubble on his good side and breathed deeply.

 _The cloak_ , he thought. _Well, bugger me._  

 


	2. Dead Rats

                                                                                     Chapter Two.

 

 

“Might be we go on, if you’re well enough.”

She nodded quickly. She had stood at his return and he watched with some amusement as the Lady Sansa raised her arms to scratch at a welt from an insect bite at her forearm, then quickly lower them again.

“Might also be scratching isn’t proper for a highborn Lady like yourself,” he laughed at her.

She only looked at him grimly, saying little. It reminded him of the night past, of those eyes under all that black liquid peering up at him. For a reason he couldn’t place, Sandor felt ashamed while captured under that look. He rubbed at his jaw again, searching for a thing to say, but there was none. Mayhaps she regretted accepting his sword. He was just an old, wounded dog after all, with no hopes of further prospects in life; he had been a fool to offer it, and she an even bigger fool to accept it.

Nonetheless he became her sentinel as she rode and he led Stranger onward on foot. His eyes were always open, always watching. He made stops frequently. It was for the girl’s sake, but half the time it was also for him and his aching leg. Sandor Clegane was a proud man, which was a pity for one with his appearance. All the same, he didn’t wish the Lady to see him devoid of his mask of strength.

“Why did you put me in the water?”

They had been silent for hours, traveling slowly along the riverbank; Sandor’s boots had been sinking deeply into clay and muck, souring his mood.

“If a fever bites too hard, you bind its muzzle with rope and cord.”

“Is that a lesson from a Westerman’s kennelmaster?”

“That it is.”

“For one strange second, I thought you meant to drown me and send me out of my misery.” Her voice is terribly small when she says this. He feels a stab just about his stomach.

Sandor only shook his head. “Drowning is too painful.”

They fall silent again just as Sandor’s bad leg comes loose on a slippery rock and buckles, his hip barreling into Stranger’s right flank. He grips his withers for support and continues on again, his face steaming, mouth cussing.

“We both may ride, if you wish.” Lady Sansa says very kindly to him.

He can almost feel her scrutiny.

“After I was burned, there had been soot stuck within the crooks of my face that they couldn’t wipe clean without me howling them deaf. So the flesh festered, and I fell into a fever. Days and days on end, the world made no sense. The heat was too much inside me, and I saw things, hallucinated things. A fever can kill you same as any.”

He begins his story so as to distract her from his flounder; and he still hasn’t answered her question. “My father had a stable boy fill a horse trough and not bother to fire it, and so it was cold. And in I went, so as to cool me. I stopped seeing ghosts but fainted from the pain, my screeching stopped and they could clean me. After that, it was just the ointments.”

“I saw things too.” She half whispered to herself. “I shook like Sweetrobin.”

“Aye, the fire does that to you, when it gets in your head.”

He could feel her watching him as he led them on, the edge of the blue ford for their road. He didn’t ask her what she saw in her fever dreams. He knew it all was likely to be nonsense and soon forgotten. Her question answered, Sandor settled back into his brooding quiet again, trying not to notice her occasional glances.

He didn’t hear Sansa's quiet gasp, so maybe it had been the small flicker at the corner of his eye that made him look up. He raised his head just in time to see the small figure leap out ahead of them. Its body was smaller than a child’s, it was open skinned except for twined leaves and a rough substance covering it’s middle. It stopped and stared at them, frozen as still as Stranger when he noticed it. It looked up; the large eyes only glazing over Sandor but holding fast on Sansa Stark. Then it skittered effortlessly through the mud and into the ford, wading deeper until they saw it look back once. 

Stranger whinnied as it slipped beneath the blue and never resurfaced.

                                                                         ***************

 Sandor Clegane was a continuous melding of both age and youth. Sitting from across their small fire, Sansa appraised him, only ever diverting her eyes when he caught her at it. He was ageless where he had been burned; there was only scar tissue so thick time could not loosen it. She looked for the foot of a crow beside his good eye but there was none. His hair was still completely black; his muscles remained thickened underneath skin mottled with puncture scars and slices of flesh cut out by steel. The only misgiving was the deep groove at the corner of his mouth from frowning too often.

The stubble on his good side was poorly kept, though sometimes he hacked at it with a dagger. His hair he couldn’t keep combed in the wood so he pulled it back, where it collected dirt and sweat and anything he laid his head against.

He was a myriad of things, but most of all, he was ugly. It was a type of ugliness that Sansa thought was a little sad. He gave off an aura of terrible anger and vengeance. The only thing that calmed any of it were his eyes. She remembered them from Kings Landing; they were hardly similar now. Her study of the man across from her went on for some time before he raised his brow and cleared his throat.

 “A Crannogman come too far south, I bet you.” Sandor said to her, his words were jumbled from munching on a haunch.

She shook her head prettily. “It was a child of the forest, I know.”

He snorted at her, “They all died many a year ago, girl.”

She smiled at him. He saw and adjusted uncomfortably, searching his side for a wineskin and drinking it heartily. He passed it to her, and she drank her full. They sat in quiet company as the sun set and the stars came out.

They were both under their respective sleeping blankets when the hour of the wolf came and both began to shiver. Sansa heard him awaken from his own discomfort and felt him turn towards her. She nearly jumped out of her skin when she felt a giant hand close around her neck and squeeze gently.

“I’m only cold.” She told him.

He grunted once in relief.

“Come closer, then.” He said it very somberly, softly. The deep voice soothed her, starting a warm turning in her belly. But that would not be very proper, if she lay beside him, so she hesitated. He was in her service as Stark now. That was still bewildering to her. Only yesterday he had called her Lady Sansa and she had not answered, so accustomed was she to being Alayne. Sansa could see his look at her hesitation, a revoking of his kindness, like he had been burned. Sansa slithered closer and felt her heart beat with anxiety. He was so warm, and the air was freezing and so was she. He didn’t reach out for her, or even look at her; he just turned onto his side and left her a place beside him on the blankets.

“Difficult girl,” he rumbled sleepily. “Just before you were much too hot, now it’s too much cold.”

“You’re shivering too,” she retorted. It sounded so childish as she said it, like something Sweetrobin would say to an insult. She pushed her fist to her mouth in embarrassment.

The man only laughed quietly. She thought he was going to say more until she heard him softly snoring. As she fell asleep she dreamt she was pressed up against her bedchamber wall at Winterfell again, thoroughly warmed from the springs. When she woke up, it was only his strong side rising and falling.

 It was when she opened them wider that she saw the sword hovering above his heart, another at his head, a third at his guts, and a fourth man just behind her, his dagger at her throat.

 Sansa screamed, and up shot Sandor, cursing while the other men started to shout threats, pressing the tips of their steel into his jerkin. His arm shot out to touch her, but a bloodied boot stomped on it just above the joint.

“One more move, dog, and I’ll slice her throat.” The voice was a deep one, and it tickled the back of her neck.

“Shitmouth,” Sandor laughed, as if not a thing in the world was bothering him, “and Dunsen, and whoever you other fucks are, thought you were dead little rats.”

“Thought you were in the Saltpans,” said the man with his sword hovered above his heart.

“Apparently not,” It was the Hound’s voice that answered, so arrogant and cruel. Worlds different from Sandor Clegane saying _come closer then_ , as he had in the dark with Sansa.

“Look at this Shit, the very last she-wolf,” growled the man behind her.

“Open her dress will you, she must needs multiply.” The one called Shitmouth laughed loudly from above Sandor’s cracking arm.

Sansa didn’t see it properly, but the Hound's other arm shot up and knocked the laughing man’s sword right out of his hand, collapsing his knee out from under him with his foot. He grasped at the sword swiftly, holding it to the fallen mans chest.

“ _I said not to move or I’ll-_

“She’s worth more to you alive than dead,” the Hound interrupted as he socked Shitmouth to the ground as he tried to get up again, cursing as he went. “Remove your knife, Dunsen,” Sandor growled as he stood up menacingly, his left arm hanging awkwardly from his side, the fallen man's sword in the other.

“You’re the opposite, aren't you,” Dunsen argued, he pressed the knife further into Sansa’s throat, “You’re worth more with my sword through your eye. A deserter like you has a price over his rotting head.” Dunsen spat on her, his spittle running down her neck.           

 With that, the Hound drove his sword into Shitmouth’s stomach, a terrible squelching sound emanated, and Dunsen bared his teeth and lifted his knife high above Sansa. In that terrible second she knew what would happen to her, but there was a trembling in the air as an arrow whistled past her ear and buried itself in Dunsen’s face. He promptly fell over, dead.

 A clash of steel sounded as Sandor danced with the remaining two men with a broken arm and an aching leg. Very quickly the two remaining lions were disemboweled and screeching for their mothers when they died. Sansa hadn’t realized she was crying until Sandor turned to her, looking white as a ghost.

“Hurry,” he hissed at her.

 _What does he mean?_ Sansa thought. _Hurry where?_ _They’re dead_. He helped her to her shaking legs till she was atop the horse again, this time he swung up behind her.

“Fuck, my arm,” he groaned, but he slapped Stranger’s rear with it and they galloped away. A sob let itself out unbidden from her throat as they ripped through the forest. Traveling deeper and deeper into the gloom, further than they’ve ever been from the Trident.

“I didn’t see the bowman.” Sandor panicked out loud. “I didn’t see him.” 

 _Oh_ , Sansa thought. _That arrow was meant for me._

Where as the actual massacre happened in seconds, the flight felt like hours. Hours of riding, jostling, and Sansa crying continuously until Sandor had to put his hand on her hip from behind and shook her roughly. 

"Enough of that," he rasped. "It's all over now. We've long outrun him, most like he was on foot, anyhow."

"You killed them all."

"Aye, or else they would have killed me and taken you," he stopped the horse and looked down at her, gauging her emotions. "In just about every which way, too."

Sansa crinkled up her nose, and Sandor knew that he had made a mistake in saying that. "Sent you back to the Queen, wouldn't like that, would you?" It was a mask, to cover his last cruel words. He only wanted her to understand. 

"Who were they?" 

"Some of Gregor's men. But they aren't too popular as of late, in the cities and the towns. They were angry with me."

Lady Sansa's brow dipped in a question.

"I killed the other half of them, before."  Sandor made a gesture for her to be silent, then moved them off the horse. His leg burned him as he hit the ground. 

Sansa tried to quiet herself as best she could, but she wanted to cry again when Sandor slipped away into the wood, frightened at his departure. But then, almost immediately, he was at her side again. 

"We're alone." He announced.

Sansa nodded and turned away from him, ashamed at her tears. She could tell they made him uncomfortable. He stood there, hands on his hips and looking down on her, eyebrows furrowed deep in troubled thought.

He moved to kneel beside her and placed a giant paw on her shoulder. Sansa wiped her sleeve at her eyes, "I've finished now." 

"Now, about that. Forgive me, my Lady, I did not think he would try that. I only believed he meant to ransom you, not kill you. But Dunsen was always a stupid bloody whore-son." 

"There is not to for-forgive, My Lord." she hiccuped. 

Sandor sighed and moved away from her to make his charge as comfortable as possible. He brought them to a shady glenn, cool and breezy near a green spring no doubt flowing swiftly back to the Trident. He tied the horse to a low branch budding out an oak and started a small fire.

The Lady Sansa looked on, now quiet as a mouse. Running her fingers over her throat, she touched at the roughened skin where the man's knife had scraped it. 

"It's opened up again." She told him. Sandor only looked at her from across the fire, eyes empty.

"I mean, the same skin as before, with Ser Shadrich and his knife."

His eyes still held no recognition. So Sansa clarified. "The Mad Mouse." She whispered.

Sandor snorted. "Squashed Mouse, you mean." 

"Yes, thanks to you. Another reason it was smart to accept your sword. Is there no man you cannot kill?"

She knew he heard the reverence in her voice, and grew meek when she saw it upset him.

"Don't give me that false praise, girl. You accepted me out of kindness, too polite to turn me away." He had took out a knife and began to hack at kindling, fashioning a considerably large toothpick and began to pick his teeth while he sat at a tree stump and stretched one leg. He moved his arm and winced.

"Your arm!" Sansa exclaimed, "I'd forgotten, here let me help you." She got up quickly and sat beside him, reaching out to touch him.

"It's not broken, calm yourself, girl." He shuffled in her opposite direction.

"Remove your leather, my Lord. I would see to it my Shield is well."

Sandor grumbled as he obeyed his Lady.

Black and blue buds sprouted at the joint, but Sandor could still bend it back and forth, albeit with some pain, but there was no disfiguration to be found.

"There now, see? Everything works just fine. It will heal on its own. _And I'm no damned lordling_. Now go chirp elsewhere, I hate being cooed over."

The Lady Sansa's eyes sparkled with mirth. "And where else shall I go? We're trapped here, you and me." Her cheeks were still stained with dried tears, but now they were tinged with a warm red.

"I don't remember you being so bloody brave with retorts in King's Landing. I'll leave you, then." 

He got up from his tree stump, looking irritable, "damned fucking rats," he mumbled to himself. He shook out his elbow before stalking away. 

"Where are you going, now?" Sansa asked him quickly, her eyes widening.

He turned, "Going to take a bloody piss, my Lady."

"Oh," Sansa turned red and looked down at her hands, sitting back down on her stump. She didn't understand how he could be so prickly when she was only trying to assist him as he was assisting her. 

When he returned, he looked contrite, and he didn't move away from her when she sat close to him, allowing it when she insisted on tending to his arm again. 

He bagged three rabbits in a quick amount of time and gave her most of the meat after he fired it. She was touched by that, and she laughed when he gratefully accepted a haunch back, eating ravenously.

At night, their elbows were touching when they fell asleep. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                               

                                               

 

 

 


	3. Rhaegar's Rubies

While they slept water began to fall from the sky, and didn't let up till well past morning. The two shivering in a private glenn deep in the forest just north of the Ruby ford were miserable. Their dark horse was in a sour mood, stamping and snorting for something to eat in the Hound's direction.  
"Quiet, you! We're all hungry." The large man yelled and threw a rock at it.  
Just before, Sandor Clegane had looked through his pockets and had found a hole in them; a gift from a lion's sword. Their last skin of gold dragons had slowly spilled behind them in the forest as they had fled in panic.  
He had cussed and swung fists in the air while the little bird rung water from her hair. Lady Sansa was shivering, but was much too gracious to complain. "No Inn Keep would turn a Stark away." She argued to him.  
"Aye, an Inn is what you need, but not for a highborn Lady of a dead House, we would be sold in a second. With my head on spike, no less!"   
The look on Sansa's face then was enough to make him want to bite his own tongue off.   
The little birds chest rose and fell with anger as she proclaimed, "If my House is dead, then I am as good as dead too!"   
"As you say, girl, as you say. Come along now." Sandor reached for her and placed her on Stranger's back. "Be still. No one is dead as of yet."  
Though the wet wood they traveled, searching for another road, straining their ears for the sound of a rushing ford. But it was only trees, trees and more trees. The girl kept looking behind them, still fearful of the lion's men.   
"What if other men come looking for the dead ones. What about the bowman?" She questioned.  
Sandor ignored her and pushed Stranger onward.   
"There, finally." He grumbled as he saw the Ruby Ford come into view. "The Inn at the Crosswords is near."  
He pulled Stranger a few more feet towards the river when Sansa spoke.  
"There they are!"  
Just ahead of them was their previous camp, where three dead men lay with flies eating their faces. Sandor stepped over to where Shitmouth lay, an arrow embedded deep in his cranium. He reached for the feathers of the arrow shaft and pulled hard, shaking it roughly to loosen it from the skull. Sansa looked away.  
Sandor inspected it. It was a remarkably light piece of weirwood and at the very tip was a very pitch black stone. The likes of which he had never seen, glossed besides the gristle left over from the man's head. Glyphs and curious patterns were etched on the shaft, pure gibberish that he couldn't make out.  
"This arrow was no lion's. "He admitted. "It's too....queer." He only stated.  
"As I've said, a child of the forest. I am sure one is following us."   
Sandor Clegane kept the arrow, he wiped it off on the loam and placed it back into the saddle bag amongst his own quiver.   
"At the Inn I will offer my services for your room, My Lady." He said lowly.   
"If I only-"  
"No." He barked at her. "Now hush your chirping, little bird."  
When they came to the Inn they were both exhausted, Stranger was irritable and weary legged and went to the stables thankfully. Sandor pounded on the Inn's door where a very ugly and mean tempered Inn Keep answered.   
"What is you want, man?"  
"I am a Knight, I offer services for a room for my sister tonight."  
"You don't look to be a Knight, ser. And I only 'ccept coin. And I ain't thick enough to believe that's your sister, neither."   
"If you have wood need cutting, drunks to be thrown-"  
"I said no coin, no room! Don't make me sic my dogs on you!"  
Sandor sneered, "Lousy whore." And the door was slammed in their face.   
Sansa stood quietly and gazed up at him. He fumbled in his pockets and looked anywhere he could but at her.  
"This way my Lady. We'll make camp just beyond here."  
She followed him, her stockings soaked, her dress clinging to her skin and her teeth rattling. He laid skins and blankets down in the wet soil under a great cedar tree, where indeed it was a bit dryer.   
Sansa knelt lady-like on the forest floor. There must be someone we can trust with my identity, she thought. But who?   
She removed her wet cloak and slid her boots off daintily. The Hound only sat and watched sourly. She rang her fingers through her hair and squeezed the auburn locks, water dripped down and fed the soil below.   
"Might be another Aunt you have, I don't suppose?"   
"None, Ser."  
Sandor frowned. "The Boltons still prowl in Winterfell, my lady, I won't take you there."   
Sansa nodded. Her gaze was unnerving, so he ambled away, using the excuse of gone looking for kindling.   
He could find none that was dry. The forest looked to be weeping. But he pulled tubers from the earth he spotted amongst a grove of ferns and walked back sullenly.   
He opened his mouth to offer an apology for her poor proceedings but stopped when he saw she was fast asleep. Her hair loosened and flown about her head so as to dry. He knelt tiredly and collapsed next to her. His back pressed up back to hers, grumbling and cursing some more, he fell asleep and dreamt sour dreams. 

________________________________________  
In her sleep, Sansa dreamt she was in her room at Winterfell, the fur coverlets so thick she was sweating. Her belly was full of bread, roasted duck with marmalade and wine to wash it down. Lady was there, asleep at her ear and snoring loudly, her wolfish breath mingling with hers.   
Then she dreamt something else. She dreamt someone was running their fingers through her hair, pressing softly, brushing thoroughly. Was it her mother? Lady Catelyn had always loved to brush her hair. No, the hands were too small to be Lady Catelyn's, perhaps it was Arya's, or maybe Baby Rickons. She roused from her sleep just enough to realize that she wasn't dreaming at all, but someone was touching her hair. It could have only been the hound. Sansa didn't dare open her eyes, but squeezed them tighter, waiting for him to stop.  
But wasn’t that him snoring, there in the background ? She could feel his back rising and falling across from hers hers. He was beside her, facing the other way, mumbling something in his sleep. Her eyes sprung open and her hands flew to her head.  
"Ser!" She exclaimed. She looked around, but no one was there.  
Sandor grumbled awake, "why must you shout-what have you done to your hair, little bird?"  
Sansa passed her hands through it. "Someone....who, was it you?"  
"Not I, by the Stranger, I never seen nothing so fancy."  
Sansa stood and ran to the nearest pool she could find, her fingers tracing the braids up and down, stopping when they came to very hard knots throughout the crown of hair. Peering into a dirty, shallow puddle, and looking down she could not tear her eyes away. Her hair was twisted in such complicated auburn twists and turns, curls and plaits. A great braided crown was folded on her head, flowing down in to smaller braids down her back. And braided amongst then she counted thirteen dark red rubies, nestled in them like a bird's eggs. Lighting her hair into colors like fire and blood.   
Before Sandor crashed after her, he checked his saddle bag and pulled out his quiver. Inside was only elm wood. The mysterious engraven arrow was gone.


End file.
